Maharaj Kaul
After a brutal day in the world the evening has slowly taken over our minds,
Ensconced in its myriad mysterious elements the mood seems to be transforming
To a more a benign perception of existence, to a more ethereal sensibility.
We do not know why we were bestowed with life – why we are here?
But its experience in the world has been grim, staccato – without a theme,
Day in and day out our breath dances vigorously but without knowing the score.
Does an evening seduce us or does it simply unfasten our distracting baggage?
Why does not the day cover our pains with the balm that the evening manages to have?
Why does not the day have the poetry of existence that the evening discovers?
We spend too much time with the world – our best dreams and energies,
Till we are left with too little to irrigate the fabric of our consciousness,
To nourish our cosmic connections.
Illusion and reality continuously play a game with us,
Often making it difficult to distinguish them,
But the world generally succeeds to gyrate us into its thrall.
What are we so harshly struggling against without success that makes us so unhappy?
It can’t be living because we come programmed with that,
So it must be something different from life that we are so desperately looking for.
The poignancy of modern life is etched in our sleepless nights,
Its desolation echoes from the craters of our loneliness,
Its tragedy lies in the nihilistic vision of life we have evolved to.
Buddha told us to snuff our cravings and kill our egos
To find a lasting pain-free existence,
Which the shallow world has induced in us since our births.
The life as it comes from nature is tranquil and meditative,
But the world in its evil wisdom charges it with greed and materialistic goals,
How a cosmic flower is mutilated and suffocated is supreme crassness.
Evening opens a new window in our minds:
We see life as a gift given to us
To absorb the beauty of the universe and spread it in the world.
As the bruised feelings of the day melt into the surrender of our soul in the evening
To an unbounded and a poetic state of mind,
We feel beckoned to the door of liberation.
Suffern, New York, 11.7.10
